Reckless Heart
by LostNSpace
Summary: Lily might only be nineteen, but desire is ageless. And somewhere across Genoa City, Cane Ashby is waiting...
1. Chapter 1

_Author disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me. This is solely a work of fan fiction written for entertainment._

_Your feedback is so very welcome and appreciated, good AND bad!_

Reckless Heart

Chapter One

It was ridiculous, really, the giddiness that glided under Lily's feet and swept her to her car like a magic carpet ride. Maybe not ridiculous for your average 19-year-old, but she was anything but average, and the man she'd fallen in love with was like the rarest gem: multi-faceted, darks and lights and breathtaking, iridescent beauty…

"Ugh," she muttered to herself, slipping the key into the ignition with trembling fingers. Even Colleen would gag if she could hear the lovesick poetic thoughts spinning through her best friend's Swiss-cheese brain.

But he'd called. He'd called in the smack-dab middle of what should have been a very romantic night with another woman…he'd called with the lamest excuse Lily had heard from any guy--something about a song--sounding sweet and smooth and nervous all at once. He'd called, and the ageless female in her knew why. And suddenly, she couldn't control the direction her car was taking, or the speed with which it accelerated, or the amount of yellow lights it slipped beneath as she steered the sedan across the sleeping suburbs of Genoa City, feeling helpless and breathless and mindless all at once.

What was the worst that could happen before this was all over? He could say no. Pat her on the head, spin her around and send her home. She wouldn't die. It would sting, but it wouldn't kill her.

Okay, yes, it would kill her. Kill her dead. Her woman's heart was tender in its youth, her ego even more so. But nothing had happened yet; she could still hit the brakes, turn around, and head home to safety, away from the looming improbability of this fledgling love affair, away from Cane and that soft, hungry mouth of his.

Lily uttered a strangled groan and turned onto the winding road that led to the mansion where he lived. Being nineteen had its up-sides, she thought, her palms gone damp on the steering wheel. For example, this penchant for being a reckless fool when it came to relationships. She never could have made it this far tonight without that crazy recklessness. She didn't know the meaning of playing it safe, that sense of caution that came with age and experience and pain, pain, pain. Right now, even if the voice of reason could have broken through the miasma of desire fogging her senses, she would have ignored it and kept right on going. After all, her destination was in sight, and it stole her breath with its ambiguous promise. The lights of the mansion sparkled through the trees, beckoning pinpoints that told her in all likelihood, Cane was awake, and maybe even in the same state of restless want that had sent her to his doorstep.

But what would he say when he saw her? The thought of what he might do—in either direction—half-terrified her. Beneath his sweetness, his gentle humor and politeness, simmered some kind of searing sexuality that Lily had only caught hints of. It was his moonlight to her luna moth, and now, pulling into the mansion's wide circular drive, she imagined herself with wavering wings, doubtful and tremulous and drawn to the heat on the other side of that huge doorway.

God, what if he was sound asleep and Jill answered the door? Or worse, Katherine? What excuse would Lily possibly produce for her uninvited presence?

She didn't have to think for long. When she turned off the car engine and reached for the door handle, her gaze strayed to the mansion's entry again, and her heart stuttered.

Cane stood in the open doorway, a silhouette against the golden glow behind him.

Heat flushed through Lily and turned her knees to liquid. Yet somehow she managed to climb out of the car, meet his shadowed gaze over the sedan's roof, and say, "Hey there."

_Hey there_. High-casual. Like she showed up in guys' driveways at two in the morning all the time. If she hadn't been gripping the edge of the car roof, she would have puddled to the ground, a boneless mass of mortification and hapless desire.

Cane pulled the door up behind him and started across the driveway to meet her. She couldn't quite read his expression, for the planes of his face were cast in shadow. She didn't know what to do. Shut the car door and round the hood to meet him? Stay where she was in preparation to make a quick getaway when he asked her what the hell she was doing there? Close her eyes and wait for the axe to fall? Yep, that was it. She pressed her forehead against the chilled edge of the car. Listened to his footsteps on grit and brick drawing closer.

He stopped beside her, the only barrier between them the open car door.

"It's two in the morning," she told him, before he could say it.

"Oh?" He spoke lightly. "I hadn't looked at a clock."

"You probably wonder why I'm here."

He was gripping the car door; she felt it sway a bit without opening her eyes. "I have to admit, Lily, it does pique my curiosity."

Lily wanted to cry. She kept her eyes squeezed shut against the threat of tears. "Your mother and grandmother will think I'm an idiot."

"They went to bed hours ago. It's a big house, they can't hear a thing." His touch came lightly at the base of her neck. He had such a way of soothing her and setting her on fire at the same time. "You're hiding."

"Wouldn't you?" she retorted, and braced herself for his laughter, but it never came.

"Come out from behind that car door." He gave her no choice when he gently caught her arm, drew her away from the sedan and closed the door. "Come with me."

She felt like a petulant child being led by a patient hand, but only until they reached the flagstone stoop and the frail porch light fell across his features.

The look on his handsome face was bewildered, delighted, tender, hopeful…but not fatherly. The years separating them vanished in an instant, and all that remained were two adults who both wanted the same thing.

_Oh, God, Lily_, she thought, following him into the house. _Good or bad, you're in this for sure._


	2. Chapter 2

_Author disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me. This is solely a work of fan fiction written for entertainment._

Chapter Two

The mansion's dim, deserted interior spoke of a sleeping household, its stillness both comforting and disconcerting to Lily as she trailed him into a sitting room to the right of the grand foyer. Somewhere above their heads, Debussy's _Clair de Lune_ spun a barely audible, haunting magic. A single floor lamp glowed by the leather sofa near the fireplace, a hardback book laid open on one nail-tucked cushion, indicating Lily's arrival had interrupted what was probably a rare moment of peace for Cane Ashby.

This was a mistake. She'd misread his phone call. He was just being polite to have called her, always polite, always warm and kind, and yes, flirtatious, but so what? He'd already made it clear he thought her too young. What had gotten into her, driving all the way out here in the godforsaken middle of the night?

Dying flames in the fireplace cast crimson flickers across the rug where Lily had paused to inwardly beat her head against the proverbial wall. She moved closer to the hearth, hugging herself in a bid to banish her chilling lack of confidence. If Cane noticed her unease, he didn't acknowledge it, merely crossed to a butler's cart that held an array of crystal decanters and splashed whiskey into two tumblers. It wasn't until he came to stand beside her and handed her the drink that he finally spoke. "Something to warm you up."

"I…thanks." She took the proffered glass and paused to watch his strong throat move as he downed his own whiskey in two swallows. When he lowered the tumbler, he brushed a thumb across his lips and looked at her expectantly, humor flickering in his hazel eyes.

"Bottoms up, mate," he prompted.

"Right," she said cheerfully, and imitating him, threw back the liquor. _Foolish, foolish_. Lily didn't ever drink hard liquor. It burned a searing path down her virgin esophagus and filled her chest with fire, but after drawing a few choked breaths and blinking back tears, she managed to breathe without coughing up a lung.

"Now." He set the empty tumblers firmly on the mantel and turned to look at her. "Do you want to sit down to do this? Or is standing more comfortable for you?"

_Do this? Do what? _A fresh wave of heat, a mixture of whiskey-shock and self-consciousness, instantly burned her cheeks. "Oh. Uh…I can't stay. I'll just…sit right here. For a minute." Backing up, she located a wingback chair by bumping into it and dropped onto the edge, ever ready for flight. _Fly away, little bird. Little nineteen-year-old bird._ It didn't matter that she'd lived a lifetime already, been seduced and married, betrayed and divorced, and more often than not felt like the most seasoned, heart-weary female on the planet. None of it mattered if all Cane could see was a child.

Before she could think, he had shoved a brocade footstool directly before her and seated himself, graceful and determined, his denim-encased knees touching her nylon-covered ones. _No escape for Lily_, his hard-jawed expression said.

"So." He braced his elbows on his thighs and gave her a hard, searching look.

She resisted the urge to lean back. Cane had such a way of getting in her space, into her personal truths. Into her heart. He knew why she was here, yet he wouldn't have mercy on her. He would make her say it.

Ire crawled up her neck and burned her ears. She straightened her spine and returned his stare with a tart one of her own. "So?"

A log shifted in the fireplace and sent sparks crackling up the flue, its flare illuminating the left side of his face. "Why did you come here, Lily?"

She dragged in a breath and let it slide between her lips. Studied the play of flames sculpting his features, the tilt of his sensitive lips, the faint growth of beard shadowing his jaw. Buying time before mortification.

"I thought…you were with Heather tonight," she said at last.

"So I was." He straightened, lowered his lashes so she couldn't see his eyes. "She…we see each other once in a while. But I don't think…"

Lily leaned forward a little. "You don't think…?"

"I tried, you know, to feel something. She's smart, beautiful, a nice person." He raked a hand through his hair and looked at her again. "But certain issues got in the way, and now I think it's over."

She swallowed. "Certain…issues?"

He nodded, that subtle, sensuous humor returning to play around his mouth. "_An_ issue, I should say. Singular." When she merely stared at him, he added softly, "That single issue being another woman, actually."

Lily placed a hand to her heart, just in case it decided to leap through bone, muscle and flesh and flop onto the rug between them.

"So there you have it. Your turn," Cane added, his focus dropping to her lips.

Forever came and went, filled with sweet sexual tension and dulcet strains of Debussy, before she could find her voice. Then she clenched her hands together in her lap and said, "I thought when you called tonight about the Lionel Richie song, that maybe you were calling not about that song. I thought you were calling about…I thought…"

This was going badly. Although the tiny frown between his eyebrows told her his attention clung to her every word, she couldn't finish. He was an exquisite, sexy, wonderful man in the very prime of life. She had barely begun. How did you tell such a man that you wanted him more than you'd ever wanted anyone? For God's sake, she sounded sophomoric, idiotic, _nineteen. _He might think he was attracted to her, but it wouldn't take long before he crushed her too-young heart to dust. _That_, at least, she was worldly enough to know.

"I'm sorry, Cane," she whispered, her lashes fluttering closed. "This was a bad idea. I should go."

Forever seemed to pass, the only sounds the crackle of the fire and the faint, quickened rush of their breathing. Then warm hands surrounded hers and uncurled the fists resting in her lap, spread her fingers one by one, gently rubbed the tension from her palms, her knuckles, her fingertips. Deceptively comforting, this gesture. Hotly seductive.

In the silken silence, Lily opened her eyes to watch the tender, knowing way his hands handled hers. He was soothing her, settling her like a trainer quiets a frightened colt, whether in preparation to reject her or seduce her, she didn't know. But she could have sat there before the seeping warmth of the fire, knees touching his, watching his strong, gentle fingers burn her alive, for the rest of her life.

After a moment, he laced his fingers through hers and tilted his head to search her eyes in that way that left no room for barriers. "Lily."

She couldn't breath around the ache in her throat. _Let me down easy, please God_.

"Stay," he murmured. "Will you stay with me tonight?"

The request was so completely disparate to the painful scenario playing in her mind's eye, she wasn't sure she'd heard right.

Color seeped into his lean cheeks as his gaze caressed her features. "You're right. I called you tonight _not_ about the song. Not about anything but this, wanting this. Wanting to touch you, just like this…"

The ottoman squeaked beneath his weight as he leaned forward and slid his hands beneath her hair to cup her cheeks. "I can't do it anymore, seeing you without touching you, without wanting you. Pretending to be friends when I burn up at the sight of you. The years between us—my God. Who gives a damn?" He laughed, but it was humorless, hungry, desperate. "Can I kiss you," he said thickly, more a warning than a question, and without waiting, swept in and caught her open lips in a hungry kiss that tasted of whiskey and desire and every aching fantasy fulfilled.


	3. Chapter 3

**Author disclaimer: I own none of these characters. This is strictly a work of Fan Fiction written for pleasure.**

Chapter Three

As they climbed the curving staircase, Lily clung to Cane's hand, following his lead on legs gone weak with desire and yes, a little trepidation, for she'd leaped off a cliff of sorts. Now that she'd opened herself to him, her arms to him, her heart for his taking, there was no going back. And though she was no virgin, Cane had an overt sensuality that guaranteed there'd be no prudence between them, no shyness, no threshold uncrossed before this night was over.

Hot excitement streaked through her when he stopped at the first door on the left of the darkened corridor. His bedroom. The place where she would learn all his secrets, and he, all hers. The anticipation was magnificent and terrible, both.

Gripping the knob, he paused to somberly search her face, as though watching for any sign of reticence on her part.

A tremulous smile from her was all it took for the frown to ease from his brow. Opening the door, he waited for her to pass inside before following her in and shutting it with his back. While she wandered about the handsomely appointed bedroom, he leaned against the door and watched her. Biding his time, Lily thought, but not for long. He would only wait so long before he took her in hand and introduced her to pleasures she couldn't even guess at.

Her trembling fingertips glided over a series of photographs sitting atop the mahogany dresser, some of them snapshots of family, others of people she didn't recognize. She picked up a faded snapshot of a scruffy, towheaded boy. "Is this someone you knew in Australia?" she asked, her voice emerging high and breathy in the room's thick, expectant silence.

"A friend I had when I was a kid. He's gone."

"Gone?"

"Dead."

Lily met his eyes, found them dark and unreadable. There was so much she didn't know about him, his past, his world. Yet here she stood in his most personal space, ready to meet him in the most personal way.

"I'm sorry about your friend," she said low.

He made no reply, only locked the knob behind him, pushed away from the door and slowly approached her. When he reached her, he took the picture frame and set it back on the bureau. "No more talking." One step closer and he had her braced against its edge, so close she could count his eyelashes. "Are you afraid of me, Lily?"

She shook her head. A small lie, and maybe he knew it, because a flicker of regret flashed in his eyes.

"I trust you, Cane," she added, and meant it.

"Then put your hands on me," he said.

His brutal directness caught her breath. No more waiting, no more cat and mouse. Time to realize her wildest dreams.

She was a kid in a candy shop. _Oh, God, where do I start?_

She must have spoken aloud because a smile crept across his mouth, a momentary, tender softening that was so very _Cane_, and then it was gone, and that fierce intensity she half-feared, half-loved, returned. Catching her left hand, he lifted it to his lips and pressed a lingering kiss to her knuckles, lightly bit the tip of her thumb, rubbed her palm against his beard-shadowed cheek…and then led her fingers down to the triangle of skin exposed by his open collar.

"Here," he murmured. "Start here."

Lily licked her lips, her attention focused on his bare throat. For all his seductive composure, a pulse throbbed there, frantic enough that she could count each beat beneath his skin. It was this minute sign of vulnerability that granted her the courage to slide his shirt buttons through their corresponding holes, her fumbling fingers somehow, magically, working well enough to reveal the tough, sculpted musculature of his chest and stomach, the faint dusting of golden hair that surrounded his navel and narrowed down into his fly. When she tugged the shirttails free from his jeans, she lifted her eyes to his…and wondered how any woman could possibly remain standing when a man looked at her in such a way. He was watching her with white-hot, hungry focus, as though she were the sole center of his universe, and no one—no Amber, no Heather, _no one_—had touched him like this before her.

More courageous now, Lily pushed the shirt from his muscled shoulders, let the garment catch on his elbows, and for a breathless pause, with Cane standing in patient silence, carefully studied him. None of the youthful fumblings she'd shared with Daniel could have prepared her for this. She felt herself coming apart thread by thread, the armor on her heart unraveling and falling away to leave her more naked than if he'd stripped her bare. Even if she'd wanted to, she couldn't back away from the perfection of this moment, of realizing she'd fallen utterly, foolishly in love with this man.

"Lily."

She remembered to breathe and cast him an embarrassed glance through her lashes.

"I'm going to finish this before you kill me." He shrugged out of the shirt, let it fall to the floor, his fingers making quick work of his leather belt and button fly. When his hands poised to push down his jeans, he stopped and took inventory of her wide gaze, her warm cheeks, the way her lips had fallen open. The fierce concentration knitting his brows eased and he reached out to her, slid a hand along her jaw, stroked her cheek and the shell of her ear, softly, softly, until she leaned into the caress like a languid cat. Then with jeans still hanging open, he grasped her waist and drew her against him, and kissed her with ravenous mouth and tongue.

"Lily…Lily."

Oh, the sound of her name uttered in that rich, hungry voice. She'd heard it a million times in dreams, and the reality was immeasurably more poignant, more delicious. Lily could only cling to his strong wrists as he nipped at her chin and the side of her throat and whispered husky instructions, something she didn't quite catch. Only when she found herself turned and facing her reflection in the wide double windows did she understand his intent.

The zipper on her strapless dress slid down, down, to the base of her spine, and she shivered as cool air brushed her fevered skin. His hands sent goose bumps across her flesh as they carefully slid inside the bodice to find what lay beneath, to stroke and measure and set her on fire.

"You're—God. You're so soft. So sweet." He pushed the bodice down to her hips, where it caught, and Lily resisted the urge to cover her breasts, reflected so nakedly in the night-dark glass.

"Don't be shy," he whispered against the crown of her head, his accent thicker than she'd heard it before. "You're so pretty. You're beautiful."

Lily closed her eyes, tried to turn into his embrace, but he stayed her with a gentle hand and lightly grasped her chin. "Open your eyes, Lily. " When she lifted her lashes and met his piercing gaze in the window, he nuzzled her temple and said, "Tell me what you want. I'll give you anything. Everything."

Too overcome to reply right away, she reached up and cupped his cheek with her palm, her head listing to the side when his hot mouth skimmed the curve of her neck. No one had ever asked her what she truly wanted. Not even Daniel. Cane made her feel she could divulge her deepest fantasies, and he would make them all come true.

"You, Cane," she whispered at last, shivering with a million unspoken sentiments as his warm hands slid up her naked ribs and cupped her breasts. "Oh, God. Just you."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Who knew the exact moment Lily's self-consciousness slid into a woman's instinctive confidence? Maybe it happened when she took Cane inside her, felt the sharp intake of his breath, and realized she wasn't the only one trembling. Maybe it was the way he moved against her, sleek and fluid, all muscle and grace, yet at the same time refusing to lose himself in pleasure, for Cane made love like he did everything else with Lily: with an intensity carefully reined by solicitude, as though he was afraid he might burn her if he turned himself loose.

Lily wanted him loosed. Undone. She wanted to be seared by him. But more than that, she wanted to show him the stars, young Lily Winters who until this night had fluttered gently, tentatively around him, waiting for the chance to spread her wings.

The wait was over. Her hands slid down the long sweep of his spine, over warm flesh and sinew, to grasp his muscled backside, to pull him deep and still his easy, careful movement. When he made to lift away, she wrapped her legs around his waist, her arms entwining his neck to stay him, and in a rush, whispered what she wanted against his ear.

"Christ," he breathed, and just like that the veil fell from between them.

He handled her as though she weighed nothing, turned and settled her atop him in a way that elicited gasps from them both. Finding the pillows behind him with a blind hand, he tossed the cushions awry, braced his back to the headboard, and settled his grasp on Lily's hips.

She might not have been as tried and true as the no-doubt countless other women he'd been with, but what Lily lacked in experience, she made up in determination and hunger, matching her pace to the changes in his breathing, gauging his satisfaction in the way his eyes slid closed and his head dropped back, in the spastic tightening of his fingers on her hips as her rhythm astride him slid into a sultry, undulating dance.

He'd intended to seduce her when all this started, she knew. And just as gracefully he'd handed over the power she needed to at last find her place with him. She loved him for it, for yielding to her desires and making her feel like the woman she truly was...for letting her show him. Somewhere in the midst of it all she told him so, the words rushing, breathless, against his ear before her teeth found his earlobe and his body jolted in pleasured surprise.

In her fantasies, their lovemaking went on and on, hazy and dreamlike, every thrust and caress in slow motion. But this was no dream, and they'd desired each other too long, emotions strung tight with uncertainty and hope and barely repressed sexuality.

"I can't—" He cursed, lunged forward and clutched her hard, changed the rhythm of the dance to a frantic and fierce driving of man into woman, and Lily let herself be led again, drugged by the knowledge that she had pushed him to this wild, restless place. This, at last, was the Cane she'd waited and wanted to see, and he was all hers, all of him, from the feverish, sweetly shocking accolades he rasped against her throat to the way his damp muscles bunched beneath her hands each time he lifted and lowered her. The combination of feral lust and aching tenderness was a potent aphrodisiac, and she found herself holding back…holding back…just to watch his fulfillment.

He was everything beautiful and sensual and uninhibited at the end, his cry muffled against her breast as she wrapped her arms about his head and held him through it. The way he took his pleasure drove her to at last take her own, and even as he shuddered, he gripped her tight, pushed her high, and brought her open mouth down over his to swallow her keening delight.

Time passed, languid seconds rolling like waves into minutes. Somewhere in the big house, a furnace kicked on. The initial draft blew coolly across their damp, entwined limbs and stirred Lily from the dream state she'd been floating in, wrapped and resting around her sated lover.

"I could sleep like this," Cane murmured, his voice husky with exhaustion. "Slumped against the headboard, all sweaty and sexed up with you draped on top of me."

Lily muffled a startled laugh against his shoulder. "That paints such a pretty picture."

"One the staff would never forget." He brushed his lips down her throat and over her left breast, his hand rubbing her bare backside, lingering, tender, before he regretfully shifted her onto the mattress beside him and held back the sheets so she could climb under.

"It's almost daylight," she said sleepily, dragging a pillow beneath her head. "You'll have to smuggle me out of here before your family sees."

"You'll stay for breakfast," he shot back without missing a beat. "And lunch as well, damn it. And maybe we'll have another go at it, too, because there's no way I'll be able to keep my hands off you after this."

Lily was too choked with laughter and adoration to muster a reply.

He rolled to face her, resting his cheek on one bent elbow, and studied her face for a long, searching moment. "I'm falling in love with you, you know."

Her heartbeat fluttered once, pleasure and shock combined. "I didn't know until now. I hoped…I wasn't sure, but I hoped." She sighed, her gaze darting away, then back to meet his again. "Cane, my dad…"

"It's the age issue, yeah?" He stated the obvious, never even blinking.

"This won't be easy, will it."

"I don't know. But it'll all be there in a few hours, after we sleep." He caught her hand, brought it to his lips. "Lily. Beautiful, beautiful girl."

"Woman," she muttered, already half-asleep. "All woman."

"Oh, God, yes." Cane laughed softly and drew her hand against his heart, and finally followed her down to dreams.


End file.
